I’m not any of those things. I’ve only slept with Sainvire. That one day. Don’t my scars prove I’m no 35
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traitor? I’ve done my part. I really have. And besides, in my book Sainvire’s a hero.
“Heroes don’t fall for nobodies like me,” she gritted.
She checked her pockets. A spool of floss, an ink gel pen with a dull metallic tip, mouth guard in case of a fight, and breath-mint spray. In those dentist-free times she had a fear of cavities and a well timed punch in the mouth that could render her toothless.
Thank goodness, she sighed, discovering the spray contained marinated garlic. It was like acid to vampires, and Sister Ann used to refer to it as holy water. She rewrapped her battered Bad Badtz-Maru wallet. The lurching Pacific Ocean made her nervous.
She felt him watching her from the stern where he steered the boat. He was no doubt sucking on a stale cigar he kept extinguishing every few puffs.
Tobacco stunk, and she imagined the smoke floating toward her despite the wind. Foamy spray baptized her face with liquid salt. Her headache subsided to a more tolerable level though her entire body shook imperceptibly from exhaustion and seasickness. She sat rigidly staring at the horizon for what seemed like hours. It was a protest. It was also a way to stave off vomiting.
She’d thrown up four times over the handrail.
When her head hung in the effort, she noticed the exterior color of the 60-foot power boat. It was iridescent blue, fluctuating shades of colors as frequently as the sky and ocean. Chameleon of the sea.
Penny lay sprawled on her lap, blinking lazily at the salty water that occasionally misted her goateed face. Now and again Poe massaged the coarse milk 36
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tea coat of her companion. Penny, quite perceptive for a dog, sensed trouble. The girl who had carried her off instead of leaving her with broken legs for the undead to finish had her everlasting devotion.
From where Poe perched, legs dangling on the triangular tip of the bow with her chin resting on the lowest guard rail, the sinking sun looked enormous.
Deep red-orange, the orb spit fire, protesting its banishment from this side of the hemisphere. Poe made a fist as sunspots flickered in her eyes. The man’s words still resonated and frustrated her.
Sometimes she was just too inarticulate to defend herself. Growing up in solitary from age eight on didn’t exactly help.
Her formal education had ended around the second grade, and she went on to the tedious affairs of dodging the undead. The rest of her lessons had been supplemented by a shotgun-toting white nun on the verge of mental collapse and by a six-foot-six black man bent on avenging his murdered lover.
Films, books, comics, and old magazines had filled in the cracks. This attack on her morality was new and confounding, and it made her want to crawl inside a conch shell.
Two years ago her neck had carried rope necklaces that would have made Mr. T nervous.
She’d whittled them down to two. She tugged at the nylon ropes holding a thin silver whistle and her house key. They indicated change, empowerment.
Calluses she’d worked hard to develop also counted as armor yet they weren’t strong enough to withstand insult. Baking under the setting sun, Poe wished she had some of her old gadgets to get her out of this jam.
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The bearded man’s bare feet made very little noise. Penny, her long body strung like a bow, whimpered softly and alerted Poe. What the heck did he do to my dog?
“Dinner,” he said. He plunked the bowl of fried potatoes and fish and a box of soda crackers in front of her. When she didn’t make a move, he squatted to almost eye level with Poe. “It’ll get dark soon, and we can’t have any lights. There are eyes that never close even in these substantial waters. You’ve got twenty minutes.”
She contemplated a huge strike along the lines of Gandhi and Cesar Chavez. She could have shoved the fried fish up his kazoo. But her cause was not deep enough, and she was fairly empty from hurling cotton candy. As soon as he headed back to the wheel, she began munching on the crackers as they were the safest food for her condition. The meal she gave to Penny who inhaled the food in no time. She poured some water into the empty bowl for Penny to lap up.
He returned ten minutes later with another bottle of murky water and a blanket which he brusquely dropped to the floor. “Wind can be fierce at night.
Tuck in that blanket.”
Poe took a long look at her captor. She took in the deep scars found even on his rough knee. His body, corded like a fanatical surfer, must have suffered mightily. Whatever beauty those limbs had boasted was forever disfigured by missing flesh.
Bite-sized flesh had been chunked off in several places like half-eaten fried chicken. They didn’t just suck his blood. They ate him, too. And he didn’t turn.
The bearded man was no vampire who could function under the sun. She’d met plenty undead, like 38
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Sainvire, that weren’t bothered by UV rays. But he wasn’t one of them. His chest took in air and exhaled.
And unlike Sainvire, this man sweated in the heat.
“Take this,” he said, retrieving a bottle of anti-nausea pills from his pocket. “It says take two, but the bottle’s expired. I’d take about six if I were you.”
When she remained motionless he shrugged and put the bottle down next to her Adidas. Everyone has a trigger, a button that alarmed when pushed enough.
Poe’s nostrils flared.
“Hey!” she said rather loudly and startled her own ears. He turned around with a strange expression in his green eyes.
“I, I’ve b-been thinking,” she began, kicking herself mentally for stammering. Speak slowly.
Breathe deeply. And don’t embarrass yourself. “Been stewing for hours about what you said. I realize you’re the last person whose opinion I should care about since I don’t know you. It didn’t help that you’ve chained me up like a sacrifice to some hungry sea creature.” You better stick to reality, Poe, and not Clash of the Titans !
“I figured you out. You’re not here to turn me in to the vampires you grumble about so much,” she said, her already throaty voice raspier from repeated vomiting. “So maybe you’re taking me to Sainvire’s people.”
“How perceptive of you,” he said drolly.
“Passionada cashed in all her favors. She asked me to risk my neck and smuggle you out of Venice.”
He laughed dryly. “My instincts are right on when it comes to danger. You see, the wee voice in my head told me to skip Venice, one of my routine 39
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seafood drops, but I didn’t listen. I know there’s trouble in the forecast.”
“Bummer for you, but worse for me,” Poe griped as she lightly felt the lump on her head. She rattled her chains worthy of the Count of Monte Cristo while she was at it.
“They were supposed to go to your house tomorrow and force you away. It was getting too hot for you there, especially since you nearly burned a house down.”
Poe stilled herself. That stupid house again. It was an accident!
“Word is, a contingent of Newbitt’s people is going to thrash the area for renegades, runaways, and chiefly a criminal rustler like you with a price on your head,” he said without inflection, though with a hint of accent Poe would still have bet worthless money to be skewed Scottish. “Passionada was set to retrieve you but was warned you would refuse. You made her work easier by going to the boardwalk.
Some sweet tooth. The hitch – your guide is expecting you two days from now. So that’s why we’re drifting.”
“You’re doing this as a favor,” Poe said with a shake of the head, her jaw muscles working. “And they told you to chain me up.”
“Listen. My motto is to stay as far away from vampires as I can. And their little helpers. I hate them all equally,” he said, his deep voice acquiring a thicker accent. “Hate” sounded like
“het.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Poe ran her eyes over his chunked body. “Especially since you were the hors d’ouvre at some swanky vamp art opening.”
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The increasingly dusky skies couldn’t hide the livid look on his face. He reached for the dark shirt tucked in his back pocket and put it on self-consciously.
“I’m a fisherman. This is a favor for a friend,” he said with ire.
“The gray poison that killed most everyone sure is something, isn’t it? It morphed fish into growing hair like John Lennon. What do you do, scalp ’em before you cook ’em?”
A slight crookedness took hold of his wide mouth alone in a sea of beard. “Loads of patrols in the water nowadays. Pirates everywhere—”
“Maybe you’ll need my help,” Poe said while she extended her wrists. “You wouldn’t know it by my size, but I can kick butt.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said gruffly.
“I’ve bloody seen you flipping truck tires around the neighborhood and abusing trees.”
He lives near my parents’ house?
He walked away irritably. The bearded man paused to look at the orange-tinged horizon. With what sounded like a grunt of displeasure, he fished out an assortment of keys from his pocket. “'N ddrwg ddrychfeddwl,” he said under his breath. “I’ve gone daft in my age. This is how trouble starts.”
I guess I’m not the only one who talks to herself.
Or himself. And in a weird language, too.
The hirsute fisherman kneeled before her. He took her left wrist and unlocked the shackle. His large hands felt rough against her skin as he examined angry scratches and bite marks from the dog attack in Venice. From the wrist his gaze traveled upward, quietly locking with Poe’s.
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“One fetter for tonight and the other one tomorrow morning,” he said matter-of-factly, dropping the chains to the floor. He ended the prickly staring match that colored Poe’s face like Mercurochrome in cotton. “I need a good night’s sleep, and I won’t get it with you prowling around concocting ways to toss me overboard like one of your damned Goodyear tires.”
Before she could protest, the bearded man added,
“Take the bloody seasickness pills before you spray my boat with more of your vomit.”
With one hand freed, a smiling Poe lunged for the man’s throat, toppling him back.
“You Cro-Magnon Neanderthal son of a bitch!”
she hissed. “You think you’re doing me a favor by unlocking one of my chains?”
Somehow another trigger had been tripped, and she was pissed. Poe had no intention of spending the night with one wrist chained to the railing. Seeing nothing but caveman, Poe grasped a fistful of beard and punched her captor in the throat, taking the wind out of him. The wheezing man struggled to breathe.
Temporarily losing her fear of the man, Penny began biting indiscriminately.
The bearded man gasped and clutched at his throat, his bushy beard getting in the way. He kicked the dog when it sunk its teeth into his calf muscle and was rewarded with a yelp.
Poe straddled his waist and clouted him on the side of the head saying, “You kick my dog again and I’ll end your miserable existence.”
Taking advantage of the large man’s pain, Poe ruffled through his pocket for the keys and managed to retrieve them. There were at least a dozen keys.
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She couldn’t for the life of her guess which key fit the lock of her shackle. She was seeing double. The man began bucking, throwing her off balance.
Unexpectedly the sudden movements and the rough undulations of the ship further hampered her equilibrium.
The man, coughing violently but with the advantage of longer arms, snatched the keys from her hands. Her stomach sloshed as they wrestled.
“Let go, you fucking caveman!” Poe cried. She tried her best not to spew on both of them. “You have zero rights to chain me up!”
With a roar the caveman snagged the key ring from the five-foot-three-and-a-half lightweight and tossed it toward the stern, a good many feet from Poe’s reach. She’d grown an inch from yoga stretches. His longer limbs and stronger upper body strength won the day. It wasn’t lost on him that Poe could barely keep her balance from extreme nausea as she seesawed on top of him.
Returning the favor, the bearded man snuck a hand to Poe’s insignificant neck and slammed her, back first, to the floor. With one move they reversed positions. His heavier bulk pinned her body and stifled her respiratory tract.
“And you question why I prefer you chained,” he rasped, his throat still sore from the well aimed punch.
“Well I don’t trust you, either,” said Poe with bitterness. “How can I when you chain me up and rant that vampires and all the people that work with them can’t be trusted? Barring your retardation, you must know by now that not all undead are evil, right?”
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“I know that they shouldn’t be ruling over us,”
the equally bitter bearded man said. “Nor should they be eating us.”
“Sainvire and his people are against those things.
That’s why he’s trying to spread Plasmacore among vampires instead of the usual death-bite on human victims.” Or the bite that drives people catatonic for nearly a year and turns them into cattle.
His eyes twinkled in the diminishing light. He was amused.
“Plasmacore? The synthetic blood?” He smiled and his clean, slightly crooked teeth showed. “Do you know how many vamps scoff at drinking that plasma concoction? It’s emasculating to them, and it’s nothing but a joke.”
“Joke or not, vampires are taking it, and that’s good enough for me. Besides, P-core’s more potent than blood, and some dead can go without food longer. Some even acquire sun immunity and such.”
“So you’re Sainvire’s trooper ’till the end, eh?”
“Yeah, Caveman. I’m a trooper for Plasmacore, a new food source for vamps,” she said, shaking. “If you’re implying more than that, I’ll slit your cave-dwelling neck tomorrow. I promise.”
“You refute the rumor circulating about you two lovebirds? So nothing happened?” he asked, his strange accent reappearing.
Poe could smell the salty perspiration and earth on him. His hairy face was inches from her, and a brawny hand pinned both her arms above her head.
His free hand left her neck, and the fingers edged their way to the valley between her breasts down to her hip – to where the top of her panties showed.
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“W-what happened between us is none of your business,” she said. Her voice dropped deeper in her nervousness. His hardening crotch seemed to be grinding deeper into her olive military pants.
“It’s everyone’s business, Julia Poe. You should know that by now,” he said with a smirk. He slid his free hand under her shirt and felt the underside of her breasts. “When a woman allows herself to be fucked by the dead, she forfeits her reputation forever.”
“Chain me up or whatever. Just get your ugly, hairy face away from me!”
His expression sobered, and the palm of his hand ceased its exploration. He realized how close he was to committing something he would never have done under normal circumstances.
“Self-check, boy,” he muttered. “Ach a gwyrdro awron?”
“Quit your gibberish, you dirty fucker!” Poe nearly screamed. “I know about the Stockholm syndrome. I’ve seen Patty Hearst and a dozen other kidnap movies. There’s no way I’m going to fall for my captor. So you can just go to hell.”
Shamed, he rose off of the girl.
“I apologize for my behavior. I’ve behaved like an animal. I, I haven’t been with a woman in quite a while.”
“Don’t frikkin’ tell me about your love life! I don’t give a shit,” Poe said with a shaky voice.
She pushed herself to a sitting position. “Unlock my wrist, and I might just find it in my heart to forgive you.”
Looking dog-eared, the man slowly walked away. Without a word he swooped down to retrieve the keys and coolly placed them in his pocket.
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Poe glanced at her dog accusingly.
“Where were you, you stupid mutt? One kick and you let him at me,” she said woefully then stuck out her head over the rail and puked.
Shivering and ill from the acerbic taste in her mouth, Poe reached for the bottle of Dimenhydrinate pills and popped ten of them.
“It’s simple, child,” a stout Sister Ann sighed, sitting precariously on the railing with sawed-off shotguns held in each arm, her habit stained. “You can break your thumb and slip your hand out of the clasp.”
“It’s the only way. Or you could gnaw your wrist free,” Goss agreed, his long dark legs draped over the stern. He maneuvered the wheel with one finger.
“You guys are insane. I’m not going to hurt myself like that.”
“Julia, your problem is that you’re a quitter,” the nun intoned in her Tennessean accent, her wimple blowing in the wind. One blundering seagull bumping into Sister Ann and down into the water she’d have fallen.
“When the going gets tough,” Goss said, pole vaulting to the bow. He landed his size seventeen shoe on her chest. “You give up.”
The pressure on her torso took her breath away.
“Uh,” mumbled Poe. “I’ve done my share.
Rescued hundreds of people,” she said, attempting to wrest his foot away.
She could barely breathe.
As another blow landed on her chest, she opened her eyes and awoke. Penny’s little feet pounced on 46
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her chest a third time. This time she pushed the dog off of her. “Cut it out, Pen! What’re you trying to do, kill me?”
Her head hurt, and the nightmare had worn her out. Must’ve been the motion sickness pills. Only the salty tang in the air and the usual fear that invaded in the dark felt familiar. Unearthly green reflectors from her dog’s eyes made Penny seem spectral. Poe could hardly suppress a shriek.
Fortunately she didn’t make a sound, for somewhere off the boat, near the bow, Poe glimpsed what appeared to be a flash of light. The small conflagration could have been from a lighter or a quick flick of a match. She instinctively knew that Caveman was asleep in his bunk.
Dead Surround - The Julia Poe Vampire Chronicles Page 4